How food in the commons can help to address inequity in US food and land access.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has exacerbated pre-existing inequities in access to healthy food and land. Programs and policies that eradicate food insecurity by empowering people with agency and dignity instead of providing handouts are essential. Bringing food into the commons can be one strategy to improve food security, equitable land ownership, and land stewardship.

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Inequitable access to food and farmland in the US

Through most of the world, food is recognized as a human right. This is not the case in the US. Even though the US does not formally recognize this human right, it is still obligated under international agreements to respect, protect, and, under emergency conditions, fulfill this right. The right to food is met when all people have access to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced in sustainable ways. The main ways to meet the right to food are by having an income high enough for purchasing food for one’s household; growing, foraging, fishing, or hunting it; or receiving federal assistance, such as food stamps, at a level sufficient to ensure a healthy diet. Not recognizing the right to food might be tolerable if the US had an adequate system for ensuring that everyone could access healthy and culturally appropriate food at all times in a sustainable way. But US food access is grossly inadequate and inequitable, and food production is unsustainable.

In the US, food insecurity (the lack of reliable access to sufficient food) has hovered between 11% and 14% of households over the time period since prevalence started to be measured in a consistent way in the mid-1990s, even though the amount of food produced and imported into the US is more than enough to provide for everyone. During that time period, US households with children—those most vulnerable to food insecurity because of its impacts on growth and development—have had significantly lower food security. Furthermore, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) consistently have lower food security. Despite this, we have no national plan for eradicating hunger, and a poorly coordinated patchwork of different federal, state, and non-governmental programs aims to prevent food insecurity.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the existing cracks in US efforts to enhance food security widened into undeniable chasms. Photos of long lines waiting to receive boxes or bags of free food proliferated in the media and were supported by reports from food banks and food pantries of spikes in demand. Blacks and Hispanics had higher rates of food insecurity (36% and 32%, respectively) than whites (18%) according to data collected between April 23 and May 19, 2020, but families of any race with children had even higher prevalence of food security. The US has failed abysmally in its obligation to uphold the right to food during the pandemic by propping up the charitable food system (food boxes distributed through pantries and food banks) rather than extending access to food stamps and supporting higher wages to enable people to buy their own food. This time of crisis has made stark the consequences of a long history of inequality: centuries of discrimination and dispossession that have resulted in BIPOC lacking the wealth, assets, or income to ensure a life with dignity for themselves. This inequality has surged since 1970 under neoliberalism, and although COVID-19 has plunged millions into poverty, the ten richest billionaires have increased their wealth by $450 billion.

Current patterns of land ownership in the US further disadvantage the same groups that have the worst food insecurity. Access to farmland is important in part because growing food is a way to improve household food security. Most arable land in the US was stolen from Indigenous people through broken treaties and flimsy constructs such as the Doctrine of Discovery or the concept of terra nullius (land lacking an owner until it is “improved”). Additional lands in the South under Black ownership have been transferred to whites through discriminatory US Department of Agriculture (USDA) practices and outright confiscation. As a result, whites owned 98% of the farmland in the US between 2012 and 2014.

Although only a tiny percentage of people in the US grow most of their own food, gardens large and small allow households to improve their nutrition, help their neighbors, and improve their income by selling surplus in local markets. Not enough fruits and vegetables, which can often be grown in home gardens, on rooftops, or in community gardens, are consumed in the US even though their consumption could prevent diet-related diseases. And diet-related diseases are the largest cause of mortality in the US today after COVID-19.

Severe degradation of essential resources for food production is another serious problem in the US. , Programs to promote conservation are underfunded, and our soil fertility, water quality, and biodiversity are declining precipitously. About 2,000 acres of farmland are converted to non-agricultural use every day, and a major turnover of land ownership is anticipated as a result of aging farmers and large numbers of farms going out of business. But this farmland is so expensive now that new farmers report access to land as one of the top barriers to starting a farm. We are in desperate need of better models for equitable food access, distribution of resources, and land stewardship; the commons model is worth considering.

How do food commons work?

Commons are publicly owned goods, accessible to all through a system of rules devised by the people using the commons. A commons is a civic “third way” between private and state ownership and control and allows management for the public good and local control by the users. In the US, air and water are often considered commons, and we might be starting to understand that biodiversity and soil should be managed as commons. Commons could help address our equity challenges with food security and land ownership.

Food commons already can be found in the US. Farmland is managed as commons under innovative programs such as the Food Commons in Fresno, California; Soul Fire Farm in Albany, New York; and the new Agrarian Commons facilitated by the Agrarian Trust in Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, and elsewhere. Each of these programs has bought farmland, created rules for dividing the work of food production, and figured out how to distribute income from food sales equitably. Commons often have a sister entity that helps to raise and administer funds. Customers might be considered “co-producers” who help decide on a fair price and can help bear the risk of bad farming years. Often the costs of advertising, processing, and packaging for long shelf life and distribution—which absorb most of the food dollar—can be reduced or eliminated. This means that the income from production goes to the commoners instead of being extracted by a giant processor or retailer outside the community.

Many new commons serve BIPOC communities specifically. Other commons, such as farms affiliated with food banks or college farms that donate food, are growing food for low-income food-insecure people. Other collective farms and urban gardens have been created so that communities can grow food for themselves, regardless of race or income levels. This “town-supported agriculture” is comparable to the community-supported agriculture that rose in popularity during the pandemic because people trusted the safety and quality of the food they produced. Supply chains for local food production were not as disrupted as those for globally sourced products, the latter of which resulted in empty supermarket shelves. All of these farming models have tremendous educational value and help to connect people with the source of their food. In addition, ventures that serve BIPOC communities are a form of reparation for the wealth, assets, and health that have been stolen by ruthless exploitation and discrimination.

Commons have numerous advantages. They allow access to land for people who want to grow but can’t afford to buy or lease land outright, they can help new farmers learn how to grow food, they provide fair income for producers, they usually mandate agroecological environmentally beneficial production methods to keep the commons productive for future generations and keep food safe, they retain wealth within a community, they connect people with the source of their food, and they allow citizens to invest in the kind of food and food production that they value.

So why aren’t more people commoning?

Farmland commons are relatively rare in the US. They go against one of our most deeply engrained entitlements: private ownership of land. And they go against the mindset that land can and should be sold to the highest bidder and used in whatever ways will provide the most income (building luxury condos and subdivisions, paving for a new big-box store, etc.). We don’t recognize growing food and increasing the health and well-being of the public as the best and highest value of land. Therefore, farmland in the US is mostly used now to provide inputs for the energy or livestock industries, and a substantial amount of the grain is exported for sale (along with topsoil and excess agrochemicals exported to waterways). Most farmers cannot make a living from farm production alone and rely on off-farm income to keep their households afloat. Parity, or receiving prices for products that cover the costs of operations, was finally destroyed by “freedom to farm” policy that eradicated supply management in 1996. The result has been that very large-scale producers acquire even more land and wealth. The largest and wealthiest farmers receive the largest subsidies, even though what they produce might have no public benefit and might harm ecosystem services. In other words, agricultural policy in the US favors the concentration of wealth and not the public good.

We might look to other countries for better policies. Providing school meals for children is a great place to start commoning; in fact, this is exactly what Brazil has done as part of its “Zero Hunger” program, which virtually eliminated very low food insecurity, or food insecurity with hunger, before the pandemic. Under the program, schools buy food from small-scale farmers nearby, and all students get free meals. In another widely known example from Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra [MST]) is taking over under-utilized private land and building schools and communities that are nourished with food they grow. Other examples abound from the Global North and South, from advancing food sovereignty and self-management of market exchanges through the Campi Aperti collaborative in Italy to surplus food redistribution in Australia through OzHarvest to building relationships of care, collective living, and land management through the Eka Nari Sanghathan women’s group in India.

The US might be ready for more food commons

Recent instances of overt, toxic racism in the US and disproportionate suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic have given new impetus to act on demands for land, food, and health that BIPOC populations have been making for centuries. The public is becoming more aware of the negative impacts of industrial agriculture and buying organic food or food from farmers who can guarantee that their practices are in line with consumers’ values. Many school districts already procure local food, whether it be bison in Montana or apples in Michigan, to benefit local producers. The USDA even provides guidance on local procurement. We might advance the goals of commoning with contracts between farmers and schools, giving preferential access to farmers who can demonstrate that they are using agroecological practices.

The call for reparations to BIPOC is growing louder, and BIPOC communities are figuring out ways to grow healthy food and encourage its consumption to reverse the deadly toll of non-communicable diet-related diseases such as diabetes and stroke. BIPOC groups from Oakland to Maine are creating commons to gain more agency over their food and health. New measures such as the Justice for Black Farmers Act and Indigenous landback movements are arising to get land and other resources in the hands of BIPOC producers and to benefit their communities.

In such a wealthy country, the only thing standing in the way of guaranteeing food security to all under the right to food is lack of political will. As we begin to turn the tide of COVID-19’s devastation, it is time to rethink how we take care of each other and the planet. The food commons can address many of the inequities of the current system while fully realizing the right to food.